No Second Troy 1b4wb

"No Second Troy" plays out through four rhetorical questions. First, the speaker wonders "why" he should blame "her" for his unhappiness and for her reckless manipulation of the emotions of Irish commoners to rouse political violence. Then he asks whether it would even have been possible for "her" to be a "peaceful" person. He thinks her character and beauty have an old-school quality, more like a figure from Greek tragedy than a contemporary woman. She belongs to another age. She could not have been anything other than what she is. Simple enough. Last, because there was no "second Troy" for her to destroy, she had to destroy other things – like the speaker's happiness, and the lives of Irish commoners. The first Troy, of course, was destroyed because of a quarrel over Helen, another politically troublesome beauty from another "age": ancient Greece. Lines 1-2 Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, […] 

The first question begins with "Why," and more specifically, "Why should I blame her?"

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Right from the start, one thing is clear: the speaker does blame "her." Otherwise, he would not be wondering why he does, or should.

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Sometimes it's appropriate to ignore the poet's biography when reading a poem, but in this case, Yeats's Irish readers would have known exactly who this "her" was: Maud Gonne.

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Maud Gonne was an Irish actress and revolutionary. Yeats proposed to her repeatedly, but she rejected him just as many times. Politically, she was more of a radical and a nationalist than he was, which contributed to the failure of their love affair. For more on this dynamic, which is essential to the poem, we recommend you read "In a Nutshell."

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The speaker blames Maud Gonne for filling his life with unhappiness. We can only assume that the reason for his "misery" is that she rejected him – again and again.

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The tone at the beginning of the poem is one of anger and bitterness. Will this trend continue?

Lines 2-3 [...]or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, 

Gripe #1: She didn't love him. Gripe #2 introduces politics into the mix: recently ("of late"), she encouraged simple, "ignorant" men to be violent.

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From the reader's perspective, this is a much more serious accusation. So she didn't love the speaker: too darned bad. But inciting violence is serious business.

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Yeats is talking about the role Maud Gonne played in encouraging violent, revolutionary activities in Ireland during the movement for independence.

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Unlike the poor, simple souls she encouraged, Gonne was an educated, intelligent woman from a wealthy background. From Yeats's perspective, she should have known better. She doesn't have "ignorance" as an excuse for her radical beliefs.

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Her for political violence is a recent development, something that has happened "of late." She hasn't always been like this. "You've changed, baby!"

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This poem was published in 1916, the same year as the violentEaster Rising in Ireland, in which Gonne and her husband played a role.

Lines 4-5 Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? 

This is a funny image. Image a woman lifting up a small street and throwing it on top of another street.

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That's not what's happening, though. It's a metaphor. The speaker accuses Maud Gonne of class warfare, trying to make poor, simple people, who live in the "little streets," rebel against the more powerful people who live on the "great" streets.

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Imagine the residents of the Bronx invading the Upper East Side and you've got an image of the little streets against the great. Except in this case, the "great" streets are actually populated by colonizers, the British.

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Yeats was a conservative dude, and he didn't have as much faith in the spirit and character of the commoners as Gonne did. The common folk have the "desire" to overthrow British rule, but they don't have the "courage" to carry out the deed. They are too impoverished and uneducated.

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Yeats thinks that stirring up trouble among such people is reckless to the extreme.

Lines 6-7 What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, 

The beginning of the second question says, in effect, "She couldn't have turned out any other way, so what are you getting your undies in a bunch about!"

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It's a rhetorical question, so the poet is talking to himself.

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how we said Yeats was conservative? He's big into aristocratic values like "nobleness," manners, and refinement.

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Maud Gonne is not a simple person or commoner. She has a noble personality, like a medieval lord...or an ancient Greek warrior.

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Yeats equates nobility with "simplicity" of mind, as if Gonne's emotions were not all muddled up and conflicted. that famous "noble" characters, like Achilles from the Iliad, are often defined by a single, purified emotion – in Achilles' case, "rage."

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Maud Gonne's state of mind is captured by the word "fire," as in "fiery." She can't be peaceful with a mind of fire.

Lines 8-9 With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, 

Yeats moves from discussing Gonne's mind to discussing her appearance. Her beauty, like her emotions, is simple. He compares her appearance to a "tightened bow" and says that her kind of beauty is old-school; it belongs to another age.

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The string on a bow (as in bows and arrows) must be kept very tight so that it can shoot arrows far. In Homer's ancient Greek work theOdyssey, Odysseus's bow is so tight that only he can string it. He's super strong.

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A tightened bow looks graceful and noble, but it contains an enormous amount of power within the tension of that single string. Maud Gonne's beauty is the same way: graceful, but containing a deep inner tension that only adds to the allure.

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The bow is often associated with ancient Greece, and because we know how much Yeats like dropping references to the good old Greeks, we can say pretty confidently that the "age" in which Gonne's beauty would seem most natural would be oh, say, a couple thousand years ago on the Mediterranean coast.

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OK, we'll bring out the hammer and hit you with it: she looks like a character from one of Homer's epics. (Homer wrote both the Iliadand theOdyssey).

and the Line 10 Being high and solitary and most stern? 

There he goes with more description of Gonne's noble beauty.

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Doesn't this line make her sound like some kind of royalty, a queen or princess?

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She is "high," like someone haughty or of "high" birth.

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She is a "solitary" person, the kind of person who is confident in her own worth and does not need to be validated by others. She's like,special. Also, her beauty has no comparison; it stands alone.

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Finally, she is "stern," or unyielding. Not just stern, but "most stern." Nobody's sterner than her! Actually "most" just means "really" or "very" here.

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She's like that teacher you used to have who could reduce you to a blubbering idiot with just one "stern" glance.

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She's not someone to mess with; she can hold her own.

Why, what could she have done being what she is?

So far, we have gotten one new question every five lines. But the last two lines give us two different questions. This line is strangely vague and general. Also, the syntax (the order of words) is gnarled and complicated with all those verbs: "could...have," "done," "being," and "is." The speaker is simultaneously thinking about some other reality in which Maud Gonne was not such a firebrand or heartbreaker, even as he recognizes that it could never have been any other way. He decides that there is no point guessing about what could have been and blaming Maud for the way she was born and raised. That's just how she is! To make matters more confusing, Yeats even manages to squeeze two question words into one question: the line begins, "Why, what..." We would have liked him to work in "how" and "when," too, but not a bad effort as it stands. Line 12 Was there another Troy for her to burn? 

The poem ends on this simple and pithy question, which is like the punch line after an elaborate setup.

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Considering that the title of the poem is "No Second Troy," we were wondering when the ancient city of Troy was going to make its big entrance. Yeats creates suspense by delaying this until the last line.

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The mention of Troy ties together the little hints about how Maud Gonne is like a character from an ancient Greek epic. In this line, he compares her directly to the famous Helen of Troy.

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Helen of Troy was considered the most beautiful woman in ancient Greece, maybe even the most beautiful woman of all time.

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Helen was also seen as being responsible for the Trojan War when she ran off with the Trojan Prince Paris, abandoning her husband King Menelaus, who became very, very angry.

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Helen's was "the face that launched a thousand ships." She was viewed from then on, rightly or wrongly, as a beautiful troublemaker.

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At the end of the war, Troy is burned to the ground and lots of people die.

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The speaker is saying that, if there had been another Troy for Maud to burn, she would have burned it. But since there wasn't, she had to go around making trouble for lovesick poets and stirring up violent protests against the British.

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He compares the magnitude of the problems Gonne created to the destruction of an entire city. Sucker-punch!

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And that, ladies and gentleman, is how to spurn a former lover.